Sage remembered a door. A wooden door. A purple light. And something happened then, something important, if only she could remember what, then maybe she would know how to get out of here. Where was here, anyway? A strange place, but not dreadful. Not uncomfortable. Not dark, not light, not warm, not cool. She floated, but not in water. She breathed, but not air. Nothing, not so much as a breeze, stirred against her bare skin.

It was soothing, really. Like a womb. Or what a womb might be like, she imagined. Stasis. She could remain here indefinitely and she would feel no pain. That would be nice. Pain – she couldn’t quite remember what that was like, but she knew it was something to avoid. So stay here, Sage, and all will be well. But no. She needed to remember. What? Something. A door, a wooden door, a purple light. And then something happened, and then she was here. In this womb. Strange, but not dreadful, not uncomfortable—

Stop it!

Push past this!

Think, Sage, think!

But here she would feel no pain—

A door, a wooden door, a purple light, and something happened—

The door, Sage! Focus on the door!

Not dark, not light, not warm, not cool—

No! Stop! Go back to the door! The wooden door—

A woman. Yes, a woman. Near the door. Her voice was soothing and filled with seduction, and she stroked Sage’s brow and whispered these words against her bare nape. The very touch of her made Sage’s flesh heat with yearning, but her breath carried the toxic stench of death.

“Relax, Sage, and sink deeper. Let me make your time here easier to bear. Relax, deeper. You will remember nothing—”

“I’ll remember that door.”

“Hush, relax, remember the door, the wooden door, if you like.”

“And the purple light when I walked through the door. I’ll remember that, too.”

“Relax. Go deeper. It will be better this way, if you let me give you this meditation. You’ll be here indefinitely. Let me help you. Go deeper, relax, let me soothe you, and you’ll feel no pain here. You’ll forget what pain was ever like. There’s no suffering here in the Cradle, as long as you’ve been given a lullaby. Here it’s not too warm, not too cool. Just float in the ether. Like a human womb. Or what I imagine a human womb would be like.”

Think, Sage, think!

The woman wasn’t here anymore. That was just an echo of a voice, a loop tape, a compulsive mantra clogging her mind. Sage was alone. Floating. But where was she? Where was the woman? The woman wasn’t important. But yes, she was, in fact, the woman held the answer. The key, the key to the door. The door. Think about the door. The wooden door, and then a purple light.

At the end of his long travails, Trey can finally go home to Elethereum to reclaim Sage from the Cradle of Displaced Souls, where she has been sentenced to await him. Trey’s plan, after being reunited with Sage, is to find some way to free Russ from the torments of a suicide’s hell. Even though Russ’s body has been destroyed, his soul lives on, and Trey can’t stand the thought of Russ’s suffering. How can he and Sage live and love while knowing that Russ is an anguished soul? They can’t. It’s simply impossible.

But Trey encounters a problem when he returns to Elethereum. His nemesis Diadra, in league with the forces of evil, has managed to steal Sage from her lullaby tank in the Cradle. And Diadra won’t reveal where Sage has been hidden.

Sage doesn’t know where she is. She has almost no memory of anything other than a wooden door, a purple light, and a woman who whispered a new lullaby into Sage’s ear. Part mantra, part hypnotic instruction, the lullaby controls Sage’s ability to think, to feel, even to move. But she knows she must fight the effects of the lullaby, even if she can’t remember why.

Sage finds a way to work her lullaby’s instructions to her advantage, and as a result, she regresses through her many past lives. In each of these lives, she sees a man she thinks of as her husband -- Russ, always hiding from her, always fighting against their intimacy. And she also sees Trey and knows him for who he is, even if she shies away from understanding what he hopes to accomplish.

As Trey fights to find her, Sage relives each of their past lives together. This past life regression changes everything. Where in the past, she had always been destined to bond with her husband, now Trey is a part of their love and life cycle. Over and over, Trey repairs the preordained pair-bond by inserting himself into it. The two have become three. The Couple is now a Trinity.

Trey did not know that this would be the effect of his efforts. He knows a Trinity is the most stable form in nature and the most sacred form in heaven. A Trinity can never be diminished. But this means he can no longer simply rescue Sage and try to find some measure of comfort for Russ’s soul. He must find a way to reunite all three of them, body and soul, in the human timeline on earth. Is this an impossible task? Or is it the fulfillment of the Creator’s most mysterious prophecy?

Love is human.

Love is divine.

Love alone can transcend time.

To My Reader: Have you ever wondered who you might have been in a past life? Sage never did, not until the moment she began her past life regression. Now she’s learning page by page just who she used to be -- and how that changes who she’s destined to become! Enjoy!

Reviewed by Nicole (reviewer) Book 12 of Three Kinds of Wicked Book Genre: Erotic Romance, Fantasy Romance, GLBT, Ménage or more

In Wicked Temptation, Trey made a mistake that cost him his heart mates. To pay penance for this mistake Trey must travel through multiple timelines to bring together preordained couples. To save humanity and his heart mates, Trey has gone through some wicked sexy and emotionally draining ordeals. Trinity by Nicki Risk is the conclusion to the Three Kinds of Wicked series. Will Trey be reunited with Sage and mend Russ’s soul?

Nicki Risk’s novel Trinity was pure magic. Never has a romance novel brought me near tears simply because of the connection the characters shared. It is hard for me to accurately articulate my thoughts on this novel when all I can do is gush about how thoroughly I loved it.

The love between the characters was not real or palpable; it was transcendent. Often times, in novels where the primary characters are engaged in a permanent m/m/f ménage relationship, I always sense a disconnect between a set of characters, usually in the m/m relationship. But these three characters… well they each loved each other completely and equally. They truly are the perfect Trinity, and make me yearn to have a relationship like that myself! Each character had strengths and weaknesses that were perfectly complimented by their partners.

The only tiny complaint I would have is that there could have been more sex scenes, but the relationship and anticipation Ms Risk builds between her characters over multiple books makes the scene(s) they do have together much more rewarding and heart-wrenchingly sexy than novels that have more frequent or even steamier sex scenes but less connection. Ms Risk also chooses to alternate POVs, which frustrated me in the beginning when a certain character was in the middle of a critical scene and you have a fade to black moment, but eventually pulled me in because I became equally invested in each character’s story line.

I must credit some of my classification of the relationships’ transcendence on the setting and the magic of the Trinity. What other readers may find cheesy, I delighted in. There is a nice little surprise which interconnects all the previous novels to Trinity. Nicki Risk creates a truly engaging otherworld that will leave you a bit dazed at the expansiveness of it all. But that is what is so wondrous about her creation; the universe is beyond human comprehension and she captures that. She weaves that magic into her characters, leaving the reader with an ending that doesn’t disappoint.